Part 6

One conspicuous monument survives to emphasise the retreat of the empire. It is something the Arab could not waste because it did not lie within the circuit of the walls: its great stones were too remote from his buildings to be removed, and its mass too threatening to be undermined. It was the Aqueduct. This, for the most part, still stands, and carries an aspect of endurance which is the more awful in that nothing else of the city has endured. It spans a lonely valley in which the bay and the old harbour are forgotten, and it is as enormous as the name of Rome.

[Illustration]

It is more like a wall for height and completeness than are any of the huge Roman arches I know. Its height is such that it catches the mind more strongly than does the Pont du Gard, and its completeness such that it arrests the eye more than do the long trails of arches that stretch like rays across the Campagna. It appalls one because it is quite alone, and because the multitude that gave it a meaning has disappeared. One could wish to have seen this thing before the French came, when the brushwood of the valley was quite deserted and when one might have thought it fixed for ever in an intangible isolation which no European would come again to reoccupy and to disturb.

Even to-day one may climb to the further, inland, side and look down the perspective of its arches with some illusion of loneliness, and live for an hour in the fifteen centuries of its abandonment. Its height, its fineness, and the ruin of its use are so best seen, and its long line of purpose, pointing on to a city that no longer remembers baths or fountains. It is the ceaseless refrain of Africa. Italy, Gaul, and Spain have ruins like these, but these ruins are right against a life which has always been vigorous and to-day is especially renewed: only in this one province of Africa do you find Rome arrested, as it were—its spirit caught away and its body turned into stone.

[Illustration]

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[Sidenote: The Beginning of the Journey to the Desert]

There was last to be seen, before I could leave this province, the desert and those dead towns which stand along the hither fringe of it: the deserted homes of the Romans, and chief among them Timgad.

The Atlas, I had heard, is there at its highest, and the knot of mountains into which it rises is called the Aurès. Upon its southern side it fell steeply (I was told) upon the Sahara, and its northern supported, on the last of the High Tableland, those ruined cities. Here the frontier legionaries had been posted, and here the Arab invasion had so wasted the forests and dried up the run of water that the towns had died at once. This Timgad in particular is famous for its perfection and for the complete survival of its form, but especially for this, that you walk along paved streets and between standing columns and look, from the seats of a theatre, towards a great arch or gate not yet fallen, and yet never hear the voice of a living man.

I took my way to this place, the last of the towns I desired to see—the tombstone, as it were, of the empire, the symbol or promise of the reconquest. I went partly by day and partly by night, partly by the railroad and partly on foot across the High Plateau southward till I should come to it. Upon my way I met many men who should, perhaps, have no part in such a little historical essay as is this, but for fear I should altogether forget them I will write them down.

The first was an ill-dressed fellow, young, and with very sad eyes such as men keep sometimes in early life but lose at last as they learn in time to prey upon others. He had been unfortunate. We went along together across a plain peculiarly lonely, and towards a large, bare, isolated rock as high as a Welsh mountain and, as it seemed, quite uninhabited. We were already in sight of the main range of Atlas, and in the far ravines was a darkness that might, perhaps, be made by cedar-trees, but all around us was nothing but bare land and now and then a glint from salt marshes far away.

[Sidenote: Story of the Lions]

I asked him from what part of France he had come. He answered that he was born in the colony. Then I asked him whether the colonists thought themselves prosperous or no. He said, as do all sad people, that luck was the difference. Those whom fortune loved, prospered; those whom she hated, failed. He was right; but when he came to examples he was startling. He showed me, high upon the rock before us, which I had thought quite lonely, a considerable building, made of the stones of the place and in colour similar to the mountain itself. “Beyond this hill,” he said, “is Batna, and beyond Batna is Lambèse. Since you are walking to Timgad you will pass both these places, and everywhere you will hear of the House of the Lions. Then you will learn, if ever you needed proof, that it is luck which governs all our efforts in this colony.” I looked curiously at the great house, and asked him to tell me the story. This he did; and I write here, as exactly as I can from memory, the story he told.

“In that very place upon the hillside where now stands so huge a house stood, when we were yet children, a little hut of stone such as the settlers build, with two rooms in it only, a bed, three chairs, a table, and a cooking-pot. And to this poverty nothing was added, for ill-luck pursued that roof.

“There lived under it a man and his wife who had two children. They had come here to rise with the country (as it is said), but, instead of so rising, first one evil and then another fell upon them till their little horde was eaten up and the field also, and the man had to work for others—a most miserable fate. He got work in the building of the prison of Lambèse, but, as he was not created by God to be a merchant or a mortar-mixer, nor even a carrier of stone, he earned very little and was always in dread of being sent away; and his companions jeered at him, for the unfortunate are ridiculous not only among the rich, but in every rank; and not only the rich jeer at poverty and shun it, but the poor also—indeed, all men.

“In a word, this man was in so miserable a way that at last he took to following his wife to church and to having recourse to shrines, as do many men when their afflictions are unendurable, and among other shrines he went to that called ‘St. Anthony of the Lion.’ Now, though it is ridiculous to believe that the Lion there helped him, (for it is not a saint,) yet good came to him through Lions.

“One day, when he had gone off to work with a heavy heart, leaving in the house but one five-franc piece, his wife, who was now all soured by misfortune and was wearied out with ceaseless work, heard a single knock at the door, and when she went to it she found a nomad boy of the desert from beyond Aurès, who held in his arms two little cubs with soft feet and peering eyes who were mewing for their mother: they were the cubs of Lions.

“The Arab boy, who was dark, erect, and strong, said, ‘God sends you these. They are five francs.’ She answered, ‘God be with you. I cannot pay.’ When, however, he made to go away silently, without bargaining, she said, ‘God forgive me, but I will buy them’; for she thought to herself, ‘perhaps I can sell them again for more,’ for Lions are rare and wonderful beasts. So she took her five-franc piece from beneath a leaden statue of St. Anthony in the window, and she paid the Arab boy from beyond Aurès, from the Sahara, and she said, ‘God save you, the lioness will follow the scent’; and he said, ‘God will overshadow me,’ and went gravely away, biting the five-franc piece to see if it was good.

“Now, when her husband came home they decided to go into Batna and sell the cubs, but their children, for whom they could afford no sort of toy, were already so fond of the little beasts that they had not the heart to sell them: they skimped and starved and ran into debt, but as the love of these Lions increased in their hearts the more determined were they to keep them; and they used to say, ‘God will provide,’ and other things of that sort.

“The cubs, then, grew to be the size of spaniels, and then they became grown and were the size of hounds, and soon manes grew on them and they were the size of St. Bernards, and their eyes grew bright and shone at evening; and at last they were perfect Lions. But from a long association with Christian men they were genial, decorous, and loving, and ate nothing but cooked meat, bread, and now and then a sweetmeat. Also, they could stand up and beg. They could roar at command. They could jump over each other’s backs; they could play as many tricks as a dog. It was in this way that good came from them.

“For one day, when this man and his wife were in a better mood and had forgotten their poverty for an hour, there came to them in the carrier’s cart a parcel of wine sent them by a relative who had a vineyard. This may have been the turning of their luck: one cannot tell. Luck is above mankind. But, anyhow, they asked the carrier in and gave him wine. Now the carrier was a Mohammedan, and Mohammedans are treacherous, so when he saw two Lions walking about in a lonely house he did not call it witchcraft, as would a Christian man, but at once he offered a price for them; but the man and his wife had hearts so good they would not sell. Then the carrier changed his tune, and offered to hire them for one week and to pay for this fifty francs: this they gladly accepted. For the carrier and men like him are incapable of honour except in one small thing, which is the keeping of words and dates: in this they are most exact. So at the end of the week he brought back the Lions, and gave the man and his wife fifty francs.

“But more was to come. For the carrier (and men like him) see profit where a Christian man would not see it, and he made a proposition to these people. He said: ‘Your Lions jump through hoops, they beg for sugar, and do other entertaining things: now I will travel with you and them, and half of all we earn shall go to you.’ The man and his wife were so simple and so necessitous that they accepted, and the tour began. But That Which Watches Over Us at last rewarded the man and his wife, for within a week the carrier died, and they went on up and down the country by themselves with their children, showing the Lions, till they began to earn incredible sums. They went to the great towns and to the sea coast. At last they became so rich that they went to Algiers, and there it is, as you may imagine, large rents but larger earnings. They lived in Algiers for one year, and became at last so rich that they crossed the sea and showed their Lions in Provence, in Lyons, and would have shown them in Paris but that, by the time they reached Tournus, they came to their own people and found themselves rich enough. There the man and his wife remained, but their children, who had been born in Africa, came back, and here they are now. They have friends to dinner every day, and all on account of Lions.”

When he had done this story he added, “It is true.” Then we went on to Batna together without a word, but when we reached Batna we had dinner together and spoke of many other things, but I have space for nothing except this story of his about the lions.

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[Sidenote: The Bargaining at Batna]

Having arrived at Batna, which is the starting-place for Timgad and also for the desert beyond, I found that there was a good road which the French had built going along a valley under Aurès, but that the distance was over twenty miles. I wasted the daylight bargaining, for no one would drive me twenty miles for less than sixteen shillings. It was late, and in my eagerness to bargain I missed the chance of a daylight march, for it was within an hour of sunset when the night driver who was to start on the Tebessa road (which runs near Timgad) a little later refused me. The poorer people whom I asked told me that no one else was going eastward along that lonely valley, but that, if I were to reach Timgad, I must make a night march of it or wait a night over in Batna itself at an inn.

[Sidenote: Lamboesis]

Adventure is never to be refused, so I went out eastward alone under the evening, and I was well rewarded, though I went hungry for hours and was afoot nearly all the way, for I saw a great sight under the sunset, and I met a man I shall never meet again.

The sight I saw was Lambèse, which was called Lamboesis by the Romans, and this is what stamps it upon the mind of a lonely man before nightfall: not what remains, for hardly anything remains, but that the fragments which remain of it should be so far apart.

[Sidenote: The Praetorian Tower]

There is a sort of long cup or hollow here pointing at a spur of the Atlas—that high mountain which holds up the sky. The big lift of Aurès is on one side of this hollow, mixing into the clouds, and on the other are isolated and uninhabited high hills. The very floor of this valley is as high as the top of Cader Idris is in Wales; the heights beyond are as high as the Pyrenees; and an air of desertion haunts the place. It is impossible to forget that the Sahara is near by, down beyond the crest of the range. For though the land is muddy and the sky full of rough clouds and rain, yet the rain seems to make no grass and the land is bare. In such a world there stands up before one a square and hardly ruined tower.

[Sidenote: The Vastness of Lambèse]

A man of northern Europe looking at this thing from the high road cannot but think it Jacobean (if he is English) or (if he is German or French) a thing of the Thirty Years’ War. It might be later perhaps, the freak of some Highland landlord or the relic of some local rebellion. It is older than our language by far, and almost older than the Faith. As one looks at it one cannot feel but only know its age, and one watches it up an avenue of stones wondering why it stands so lonely. But one’s wonder has no stuff in it till one goes on half a mile and more: by the roadside is a pile of Roman stones. These also stood in Lamboesis. Then, feeling himself yet within the walls of an unseen city, a man looks back over the stretch he has come and is appalled. In such a gaze you look westward towards the light beyond the mountains. The valley is already dark. The high road which the French have made glistens as hard as stone under the last light. Trees are still visible, especially the few mournful and hard pyramids of the cypress, but the little village, the modern prison (for there is a prison), and the rare labourers here and there are muffled up in twilight; and there lies before one a mere emptiness, beyond which, a long way off, dwindled to quite little, is the Praetorian Tower. A sharp memory of childhood from beyond years of common experience so strikes the mind.

The spread plain with its one central tower seems infinite; it is now without hedges or trees or roofs or men; but once the Legion had filled up everything.

[Sidenote: The Driver Passes]

It was all quite bare as I surveyed it—more bare than a heath or a down, and as large as any landscape you may know.

While I was watching this empty space, and surmising what contrast it would make with the famous and crowded ruins of Timgad to which this Lamboesis had been a neighbouring city, as Chichester is to Arundel—or, better still, as Portsmouth and its armament is to Southampton and its trade—I heard the rumble of heavy and fast wheels, and a man driving a coach passed me and then pulled up at my hail. He was the same man who had refused my bargain an hour and more before. He was driving the night coach to Tebessa. Not understanding men, he raised his price. I told him that I would pay him only what I had offered at Batna, _less_ the price of the miles I had gone. He would not yield, but he did these three things: first, he promised to send word, as he passed, to an old Soldier who kept a house near Timgad that a traveller was on the road; secondly, he gave me advice, telling me that I should freeze to death by night in that valley (for it was growing cold and the weather would not hold under such a sky); thirdly, he informed me of the exact distance, which was at the thirty-second stone, where there is a branch road to the right, leading in half an hour up the slopes of the range to Timgad. Then he drove on, and I spent what was left of a doubtful light in pressing onwards.

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[Sidenote: The Cold]

A great mass of snow had recently covered the peaks, and in the valley up which I was trudging freezing gusts and very sharp scurries of cold rain disturbed the traveller. I had already passed the last ruins of the Romans and had seen, far off in the dusk, the last arch of the Legions standing all alone with one big tree beside it. The west was wild-red under the storm, and it was cut like a fret with the jagged edge of the Sierras, quite black, when I saw against the purple of a nearer hill the white cloak of an Arab.

[Illustration]

[Sidenote: The Arab]

He drove a little cart—a light cart with two wheels. His horse was of such a sort as you may buy any day in Africa for ten pounds, that is, it was gentle, strong, swift, and small, and looked in the half-light as though it did not weigh upon the earth but as though it were accustomed to running over the tops of the sea. I said to the Arab: “Will you not give me a lift?” He answered: “If it is the will of God.” Hearing so excellent an answer, and finding myself a part of universal fate, I leapt into his cart and he drove along through the gloaming, and as he went he sang a little song which had but three notes in it, and each of these notes was divided from the next by only a quarter of a note. So he sang, and so I sat by his side.

At last he saw that it was only right to break into talk, if for no other reason than that I was his guest; so he said quite suddenly, looking straight before him:

“I am very rich.”

“I,” said I, “am moderately poor.”

At this he shook his head and said: “I am more fortunate than you; I am very, very rich.” He then wagged his head again slowly from side to side and was silent for a good minute or more.

He next said slyly, with a mixture of curiosity and politeness: “My Lord, when you say you are poor you mean poor after the manner of the Romans, that is, with no money in your pocket but always the power to obtain it.”

“No,” said I, “I have no land, and not even the power of which you speak. I am really, though moderately, poor. All that I get I earn by talking in public places in the cold weather, and in spring time and summer by writing and by other tricks.” He looked solemn for a moment, and then said: “Have you, indeed, no land?” I said “No” again; for at that moment I had none. Then he replied: “I have sixteen hundred acres of land.”

When he had said this he tossed back his head in that lion-like way they have, for they are as theatrical as children or animals, and he went on: “Yes, and of these one-fourth is in good fruit-trees ... they bear ... they bear ... I cannot contain myself for well-being.” “God give you increase,” said I. “A good word,” said he, “and I would say the same to you but that you have nothing to increase with. However, it is the will of God. ‘To one man it comes, from another it goes,’ said the Berber, and again it is said, ‘Which of you can be certain?’”

These last phrases he rattled off like a lesson with no sort of unction: it was evidently a form. He then continued:

“I have little rivulets running by my trees. He-from-whom-I-bought had let them go dry; I nurtured them till they sparkled. They feed the roots of my orchard. I am very rich. Some let their walls fall down; I prop them up; nay, sometimes I rebuild. All my roofs are tiled with tiles from Marseilles.... I am very rich.” Then I took up the psalm in my turn, and I said:

“What is it to be rich if you are not also famous? Can you sing or dance or make men laugh or cry by your recitals? I will not ask if you can draw or sculpture, for your religion forbids it, but do you play the instrument or the flute? Can you put together wise phrases which are repeated by others?”

To this he answered quite readily: “I have not yet attempted to do any of these things you mention: doubtless were I to try them I should succeed, for I have become very rich, and a man who is rich in money from his own labour could have made himself rich in any other thing.”

When he said this I appreciated from whence such a doctrine had invaded England. It had come from the Orientals. I listened to him as he went on: “But it is no matter; my farm is enough for me. If there were no men with farms, who would pay for the flute and the instrument and the wise beggar and the rest? Ah! who would feed them?”